These experiments will examine the development of perception and preference of colors and forms in young children, using for the first time, individual multidimensional scaling procedures. The studies will examine whether children's perception of similarity is related to their preference for stimuli (which one they like), how these preferences develop, and whether preferences or perceptions are related to the efficiency of learning. The scaling procedures will be used to determine how important color and form are in children's perceptions, and how that importance changes over the years from three to six (in a longitudinal study). Finally, earlier studies of the relationship between preference and learning will be reexamined using the multidimensionally scaled stimulus values (for preference and perceptual similarity) to determine whether children's learning is more a function of what children like to look at (preference) or how they organize the perceptual world (perceptual similarity). The significance of this research will lie in the first experimental attempts to: a) define how children perceive color, forms, and combination stimuli; b) describe the relationship between what children like to look at and what they perceive to be similar; and c) to examine the relationships among similarity, preference, and learning. Thus the experiments will provide much evidence on how these cognitive subprocesses develop and are organized.